Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
by Dreaming-Of-A-Nightmare
Summary: Before returning to the CIA base after finding Alex Summers, Erik and Charles reach an impasse that they settle with a question of 'Why' and a night spent together in a hotel room. .:. First-Class-based oneshot. Pure smut. Inspired by a fanvid.


**A/N: Inspired heavily by this video: youtube(dot)com(slash)watch?v(equals)FstEt(underdash)5gvwI**

**WATCH IT. It's… well, it's pretty much HNNG-inducing. XD**

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><p>Their rooms, across the hall from one another. Their minds, clouded with alcohol just enough to blur better judgment without risking memory or underlying truths or desires. Their hands, cradling tumblers; their mouths, sipping idly at the rims of the glasses.<p>

They haven't left to return to the CIA facility yet after finding Alex Summers. He is going to meet them at the airport the day following tomorrow. They wanted to take their time before going back. They wanted some freedom. They wanted to think things over, particularly their current situation. Their current _lives_.

Charles hasn't shaved in a couple days; completely unlike himself. Erik, for that matter, hasn't shaved recently, either, but for him, this is nothing terribly new.

It's Erik who initiates it. "It" being the start of something they never expected of one another, together, as an event, or a relationship, or even as a _whole._

A knock on Charles' door forces him up off of the sofa in the hotel room. Erik is leaning against the doorframe the second Charles wrenches the door open, the hinges squeaking subtly.

"Surprised you didn't unlock and open the door yourself with your abilities, my friend," Charles comments idly, a slight slur sounding fuzzy around the corners of his English accent.

"And I'm surprised you didn't see this coming, what with _your _abilities, Charles," Erik replies smoothly, his voice entirely lacking a slur, but his breath still smelling tartly of alcohol. He leans in, hand gripping the wooden frame, and presses a messy kiss to the side of the telepath's mouth.

Charles blinks, startled, and takes a step backward. He looks at Erik quizzically, but he doesn't say a word. Erik walks in, shuts the door and locks it behind him with a hand in the air and his magnetic abilities activated. He stalks closer as Charles retreats, turning his back on Erik and thinking vague thoughts that don't seem to connect in this moment.

"Don't misunderstand me, Charles," Erik almost purrs, his voice low. He could sound threatening to anyone else. He could sound dark or controlling in any other situation. But Charles knows better. He can sense it in the air between their minds that Erik means no harm, and doesn't quite even mean seduction. He is simply speaking in that husky tone because he doesn't want to be overheard.

Charles hikes his black undershirt up over his head and drops it onto a chair. His back still turned away, he answers in his own soft, low voice, "Then help me to understand properly, Erik."

Erik wastes no time in closing the distance between them in three long strides. He brings his hands up to smooth over the warm skin of Charles' biceps. He moves his hands down to glide over Charles's sides and rest on his hips as Erik leans in and touches his lips to the back of the telepath's neck.

Charles sighs and closes his eyes. His skin burns, and perhaps that is the alcohol heating him up, and perhaps that is how Erik makes him feel, but it's something and it's slowly consuming him. He leans back, and he can feel the cloth of Erik's shirt tickling his lower back. Erik's lips are petal-smooth but firm, and as they ghost over Charles' shoulders and neckline, Erik's nose in his hair, a none-too-disguised shiver runs through the telepath and it's all he can do not to turn his second sigh into an airy moan.

Erik's hands leave a ticklish trail on Charles' body, the metalbender's hands rubbing all down Charles' skin, thumbs skimming pert buds on defined pectorals.

Charles' thoughts slip into Erik's mind, but he doesn't read any of the thoughts there. Instead, all he says is a projected idea: _We're not matched, you and I. Take off your shirt, Erik._

The demand, even as gentle as it is in Charles' voice in his head, does something strange to Erik. He feels a jolt in is body that is unfamiliar to him, something that goes beyond normal arousal. He begins to breathe more laboriously, and he has never moved faster while removing his clothes.

He presses his bare chest against Charles' spine, the light friction of chest hair sending pinpricks of excitement straight to the telepath's manhood. Erik's tongue flicks out and tastes Charles' earlobe, and he finds that he likes it better than whiskey.

Charles' breath hitches in his throat, caught as if with a net, and he doesn't release it. Instead, he sucks in more air, it cutting sharply past his teeth, sending a chill to his lungs. Goosebumps arise on Charles' flesh, and he instinctively whirls around, tackling and pinning Erik down onto the bed. Erik touches Charles' face fondly before leaning up for a kiss. Their lips mash furiously, but soon calm into a slick rhythm of dancing tongues after a while.

Erik rolls Charles over, kissing along his torso and stripping Charles of his pants. Charles' hands drag repeatedly through Erik's hair, and his breathing is nothing but gasps. Erik can hear the telepath's heart thudding as he presses his lips over the shorter man's sternum, and he can almost taste the iron in the rushing blood beneath Charles' skin, and he can _definitely_ feel each heartbeat.

When he reaches Charles' belly button, he stops and flickers his lust-filled, slightly drunken gaze upward to meet Charles' eyes in the dim one-lamp lighting in the hotel room. Slinking upward again, he looks at Charles and asks quietly, "Why?"

Charles' eyes clear some of his haze, and he quickly scans the metalbender's mind for what he means by that. He finds a jumble of left-unsaid questions: _Why me? Why now? Why do I feel this way? Why do you act like this for me? Why are we doing this? Why does it feel so right? Why is this happening?_

Charles chuckles breathlessly. He plants kisses along Erik's jaw, his hands feeling down Erik's back and around to graze his stomach. "Why, you ask?" he repeats, his voice carefully toned; he purposely comes off as easy, open, and understanding. "Why you, because I could have nearly anyone? Why now, because we are on a mission and drinking? Those are easiest to answer, Erik. You, because the second our minds touched that night I saved you from drowning, I knew you. And in knowing you, I felt a connection with you. And within that connection, I understood you. And through understanding you, I began to fall in love with you."

"And so _now_'s answer would be proper timing? The final grain to tip the scale, and make this happen at last?" Erik murmurs for clarification as he turns his neck to the side and holds up Charles' head with one hand as he hovers over the shorter man, while the shorter man continues to kiss at his throat and suckle on his collarbones.

"Precisely," Charles whispers, "And as for why you feel this way… That is up to you to answer. But I think you already know why I'm acting this way for you, as well as why we're doing this from the combined answers of the previous two questions. And then…" He nips lightly at the junction between Erik's neck and shoulder, and it makes the taller man groan throatily. "As for why this feels right…"

He licks the love-bite and slides down on the bed to press his hands up against the narrower end of Erik's torso, planting his face between his own hands, Erik's arms trembling on either side of his shoulders, as Charles kisses the shaking muscles of Erik's abdomen. His hands slide to grip roughly at Erik's pelvis, and he gently flips them over so he may sit with his legs on either side of Erik, their groins pressing together deliciously. He sighs and rocks forward, bending over to kiss hungrily at his friend's mouth.

"It feels right because this isn't about homosexuality, and it isn't about love or lust, unless you want it to be. This is about longing and easing tension; this is about finding completion in another person; and this is about being the same, being _equals_. Mutants doing what they can for the better in the future of mutanity, and mutants finding solace in one another," Charles relays in pieces, pausing at each comma and period in his miniature speech to breathe or kiss or touch Erik's body, feeling the slightly older man tense up or shudder or skip a heartbeat or arc backward.

Panting, Erik moves to strip them of the rest of their clothing, as well as pin Charles back down. "Pretty words, Charles," he murmurs as he leans down to speak against the tender skin of Charles' neck, "And as true as they are, and as much as they console me, I really think this is about lust and/or love in the end."

Because Erik is a man who knows what he wants; he wants revenge on Shaw, he wants to seek out more mutants and build an army, he wants humans to recognize that they are inferior to mutants while mutants rise into power to combat human fear, and he also wants Charles. Just Charles, as a possession and a lover and a comrade and a partner and a trustworthy, loyal friend; whatever Charles has to offer, whatever Charles can be or is, Erik wants it all.

Charles hears this even through his haze, all a gnarly mass of thoughts, but he grips the meaning behind them. He moans as their erections brush and Erik moves to slip slick fingers – slick with saliva, Charles assumes – into the telepath. And Charles understands, too, in this instant that things are never quite going to be the same.

Erik lifts Charles' legs and enters him once the entrance has been fully prepared to the point where Charles was pleading with his mind for Erik to give him the real thing instead of merely his lengthy digits. Charles groans with a tinge of burning pain as Erik moves slowly into him, resisting the urge to twitch his hips and plunge right in to the hilt straight away.

Once inside, sheathed completely, it's like nothing Erik has ever felt. There is the pleasure around him, coursing up his veins and making him dizzy, tremulous with bliss, but there is the deeper knowledge behind the gratification of sex that speaks of intimacy and the completion Charles spoke of moments prior.

Erik carefully pulls out halfway, then slides back in again, using a hand to swipe pre-come from Charles' length and use it as added lubrication. Charles gasps and grips the sheets over the mattress until his knuckles go white. Erik tries to calm him by leaning forward and kissing Charles' forehead, chin, cheek; whatever he can reach. He pumps Charles with one hand to distract him while his other hand is flat against the small of Charles' back, lifting his hips to meet Erik's own where Erik kneels between Charles' widespread legs.

He slides in and out, it getting easier and farther out each time until he is moving from head to hilt with every thrust, delving as deeply as he can at a few different angles each time. Charles' brows begin to relax, his hands flying up to grip Erik's shoulders. He's moaning now, head thrashing now and again, and Erik thinks that he must be doing something correctly.

Charles tips his head back, smiling without realizing it, muttering something like, "Yes!" under his breath, and then repeatedly in his mind, _Erik, Erik, Erik – oh, God! – I love you, Erik, yes, yes, please, don't stop._

Erik can hear him, but he wonders if Charles is merely projecting or if he can hear Erik's own thoughts, because they are oddly similar; _Charles, my God, I just – you feel so – I think I love you too, yes, no, I won't stop, Charles, Charles._

Charles erupts first, his breath hitching as his head craning back again, his knees buckling to pinch on either side of Erik's hips. Erik pumps Charles through his orgasm and it isn't ten or so more hunched-over, erratic bucks into Charles until Erik reaches his own climax, a low, rumbling groan emitting form his mouth and vibrating directly into Charles' left ear as he feels a trickle of warmth fill his insides.

They slowly pull apart only to have Charles curl up against Erik's side, head on the metalbender's shoulder. His hand one arm bent at the elbow resting over Erik's chest with the other holds lightly onto Erik's wrist, the taller man's hand playing idly with Charles' brown hair.

The telepath grins again, tired but content, and Erik looks down at him, faintly smiling in return as they soak in the afterglow and wait to fall asleep, ready to do whatever they have to come morning.


End file.
